


the questions war cannot answer

by kickedshins



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Sleepovers, its about the found siblinghood of it all, ruby has a lot of trauma she needs to unpack, she will not be unpacking it here but it certainly exists, takes place the night before the battle in e16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25605052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: Amethar the Unfallen. Ruby wonders if she’ll have a title like that after all this is over. She feels something pooling in her stomach, something filling her to the brim, and she can’t tell if it’s hope or dread. At what point does sugar become too sweet? At what point is it sickening?orIt's the night before the storm on Castle Candy, and neither Ruby nor Liam can sleep.
Relationships: Liam Wilhelmina Jawbreaker & Ruby Rocks
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	the questions war cannot answer

**Author's Note:**

> blah blah no betas we die like candycanes or whatever. truly tho i wrote this in one go at 1am after e16 and the talkback and have not edited it so. enjoy my first ever dimension 20 fic!

The night before storming Castle Candy, Ruby can’t sleep.

She’s not very old. She’s eighteen, and, sure, that makes her a grown-up, but she’s aged much more in these past few weeks than she has in any of her other years of life. What do years mean, really, when stacked against all this?

She doesn’t know how many more she has left. Years, that is. She deserves more than she’s going to get, probably. Jet sure as hell did. Saccharina’s managed to stick it out for an impressively long number of them. 

But that’s war, Ruby thinks. So much of it hinges on strategy, on the hushed tones of her father being bulldozed by her mother’s determined voice and steely gaze, but so much of it doesn’t. So much of it hinges on the behind-the-scenes dealings of villains, twenty long years of betrayal, a well-placed knife through the chest or an arrow in the throat, but so much of it is random. 

If Ruby hadn’t been standing atop the roof that day on the Sucrosi Road, would she have gone down? If she hadn’t ran like a coward from Dulcington, would she still have a sister that she trusted by her side? 

She doesn’t know. These are the questions war asks, and these are the questions war cannot answer. 

Ruby can’t answer them, either, and it’s keeping her up. She doesn’t want to pace the decks of the ship, because she doesn’t want her mother to hear her clomping around and come up to tell her to go to bed, but she can’t sit still right now. She’s going home, home to a place that slaughtered her sister and threw her father ungracefully off its shining walls, and she can’t help but feel a little sickened at the thought of it.

Screw it. She slips out of her shoes and treads upstairs, light on her feet. If Caramelinda gets on her ass about this, Ruby’ll say something about how _didn’t we agree that I’m being treated as an adult now, as an equal_? 

Ruby doesn’t want to think about that right now. Doesn’t want to think about the very real possibility of having to put down Saccharina. Her queen, she’d called herself. A lie. Not her queen, and not her sister. Still a person, though. Still a person.

If push came to shove, she’d do it. If it were her father or the woman who thought she could be what Jet was, there’s no question that Ruby would be happy to deal the killing blow herself.

She’s too tired for this. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long month.

It’s cool above decks, the autumn air not entirely stagnant but not windy enough to be biting. Probably not great for sailing, but Ruby wouldn’t know what a starboard was if it bit her in the ass, so she focuses more on how still the night is. A good omen, hopefully. Representative of the peace they’re going to bring.

It takes Ruby almost two full laps around the deck to notice that, the few soldiers awake on shift aside, she isn’t alone. Leaning against the railing is a lithe boy in a pair of beat-up coveralls, bow by his side and cap in hand.

“Liam,” she says, soft enough as to not break the quietude of a clear and starry night, but loud enough so that he doesn’t jump when she steps up beside him. “Can’t sleep?”

He shrugs. “Nah, not really. You neither?”

“Not really,” she echoes. “Big day tomorrow.”

“No shit,” Liam says. “Hey, I think I’m engaged.”

“Oh,” Ruby says. “What?”

Liam scratches at the back of his neck, gazing out at the sea. “Yeah, I think Primsy and me got engaged. Primsy and I. It’s still kinda up in the air, though? So don’t quote me on that. I mean, if neither of us die tomorrow!” He laughs, abrupt and loud, and it should feel wrong, but it doesn’t. “I don’t want her to fight. I don’t want her to die. She’s a good friend, you know? And, I mean, I don’t wanna die, either.”

“I won’t let you,” Ruby says. She feels a little ridiculous—she’s only a few months older than him, for the Bulb’s sake, but she feels like an older sister. It feels disingenuous to call him a twin. “I swear that to you.”

“Cool,” Liam says. “And, I mean, I’m not gonna let you die, either. You’re– well, I wouldn’t call you a sibling, because that would be really mean of me, considering, y’know, how my whole. My brothers suck, man.”

“I know.”

“But you’re something like that.”

“I know,” Ruby says again. “You, too. Thank you,” she tells him, and she says it in Twinspeak.

“Any time,” he says back. 

“Are you up here for any reason in particular, or is it just general insomnia plaguing you?”

“Dude,” Liam says. “The whole marriage thing? I’m a kid! Well, no, I’m not a kid, but that’s a very recent development, and marriage seems a little hasty. Like, I’m not mad at it, because Primsy is great, and we talked about, like, what we were expecting out of a relationship, and she’s super cool with my being asexual, and that’s awesome, because some people wouldn’t be, and those are shitty people. And obviously it’s a good political alliance. But still. Do you think I’ll have to wear a tux?”

“I mean,” Ruby says. “It’s a wedding.”

“So that’s a yes, then?”

“That’s a yes.”

“Wedding aside,” Liam continues, “like I said. War. Tomorrow. Kind of hard to sleep on that. This is gonna be my first time in war—like, _real war_ —and that’s cool, sort of? But it’s also pretty fuckin’ terrifying, and I wanted to go back to being a seed guy, but I guess it’s not really my choice, is it?”

“It never is,” Ruby says drily. “Life would be a lot easier if it was. Like, hey, I’d like to _not_ go to war today, thank you very much! And then I pack away all my weapons and my spells, and that’s that. And I go home…” She trails off. She laughs, once, and it’s nothing like Liam’s laugh from earlier. Equally humorless, and equally shocked, but this one is drained. She’ll say this about Liam: he’s clung onto an amazing amount of humanity. Through assassinations and a dead best friend and falling into hell, he’s still been a person.

She worries she can’t say the same about herself.

“Home,” she repeats. “Well. I’m going home now, aren’t I?”

Liam looks like he doesn’t really know how to react to this. “Um. Yes. Though, I mean, I went “home” to Castle Manylicks, but that doesn’t mean I went _home_ , you know?”

“Home is people,” Ruby says.

“Yeah! Home is people. Home is… you make your own home. It doesn’t have to be that place if you don’t want it to be. I sure as hell wouldn’t fault you for not wanting it to be. It’s got some pretty bad vibes to it at this point.”

And, yes, that’s true, but Castle Candy will forever be Ruby’s home. Liam is right—home is people. And she has that here with her, his hair rustling in the slight wind that whisks off the sea. She has that in a cabin below her, her parents sleeping (or lying awake, probably) in the same bed, too much space between them. She has that around her neck, a locket that will never be bright again. She has that in her shadow and she has that in her heart. So, no, no matter where she goes, Ruby will never be without home.

Still. Still. Still.

There’s so much to Castle Candy. Eighteen years there, eighteen years that Ruby isn’t going to forget any time soon. Chasing Jet through the corridors, escaping Caramelinda and Lapin and their lectures on proper conduct. Riding around on Theo’s back, blunted training sword in her hand, pretending to lead a fleet of cavalry into battle. Curled up in Amethar’s arms, curled underneath the covers of her bed with Jet wrapped around her, curled into herself.

There is so much good that has happened between those walls, and Ruby isn’t going to let a cake with a complex take that all away from her. She wraps her fingers around her locket and says, “It’s still my home.” And it feels less like a statement, really, and more like a challenge. It’s hers. How dare Calroy try to take it from her? How dare the witch-queen? How dare anyone stand between her and the walls that shaped her, the hallways that held her, the castle that made her Ruby of House Rocks?

“That’s cool, too,” Liam says. “Whatever works for you.”

“Thanks,” Ruby smiles. “You’re very understanding, you know that? You’re a good friend.”

“Oh! Oh, thanks. I mean, before you and Jet, I hadn’t had a lot of experience with it other than Preston, so, I mean. I’m glad I can pull it off.”  
“You do. Quite swimmingly.”

“You, too,” Liam tells her. “I know you didn’t really know many people our age other than your sister until I came along, so. Even without a ton of practice, you’re good at it, too.”

“That means a lot to me,” Ruby tells him. And she wants to tell him more—wants to confide about Saccharina, about her parents’ argument, about turncoats and betrayals and Bulb above, this is just a never-ending cycle, isn’t it?

She hopes not. It can’t be. She’s better than that. Her family is better than that. They’re going to make a brighter future, a better Candia, and it isn’t going to be a twisted, razed-to-the-ground hellscape like Port Syrup became. And, no, that may not have been Saccharina’s fault directly, but Ruby’s seen up close and personal the dangers of an unstable advisor.

Amethar the Unfallen. Ruby wonders if she’ll have a title like that after all this is over. She feels something pooling in her stomach, something filling her to the brim, and she can’t tell if it’s hope or dread. At what point does sugar become too sweet? At what point is it sickening?

“I’m going to try and sleep,” she tells Liam. “You should, too.”

“I think I’m gonna say up hear just a bit longer.”

“You can sleep with me,” Ruby offers, and then quickly backtracks. “Not in, like, any sort of sexual capacity, obviously. That would be– that would be weird, your asexuality aside. But, you know, if you wanted to… look, it’s stupid, probably, but even after we got older, Jet and I would share a bed the night before a big day. It was probably a fallacy to think that it granted us good luck, or something, but it was comforting. So if you need a little extra comfort, you know where to find me.”

“Thanks,” Liam says. He turns to face her for the first time. “Gimme a few more minutes and then I’ll be down. You– Ruby, you’re gonna be amazing tomorrow. You know that, right?”

“I’ll do my best to try,” Ruby replies. “Don’t keep me waiting too long. The good luck charm doesn’t work unless both parties are conscious for at least a little bit of the night.” She adopts an overly serious tone. “And, of course, it’s the cardinal rule of sleepovers that we absolutely _must_ play stupid games like Truth or Dare, or something.”

Liam’s grin is wide as the clear horizon. “Hell yeah.”

“It’s going to be a good night,” Ruby says. She says it to him, sure, but mostly, she says it to herself. “It’s going to be a good night, and tomorrow will be a victorious day.”

The words hang out in the night air, hang out over the ocean, hang out over her future. A victorious day, no matter who she ends up fighting against.

Ruby pats Liam on the shoulder and heads back down to her sleeping quarters. It’s only a few minutes after she changes into pajamas and gets into bed that Liam shows up at her door in a very oversized t-shirt and a pair of ratty sweatpants. He stands awkwardly at the door as if unsure about coming in, but at Ruby’s beckoning, his shoulders drop some of their tension and he walks inside.

“C’mere,” Ruby says, patting the bed next to her. It sinks under his—albeit relatively light—weight.

He slips underneath the covers, still sitting up. “So,” he says. “Sleepovers. Not really a thing I’ve, like, done in any sort of mass capacity.”

“That’s what you need a sister like me for,” Ruby tells him, biting back a smile. “Now. I promise we’ll get to bed soon, because, well, we should be rested before a battle, but it’s imperative that I first ask you a very important question. Truth, Liam Wilhelmina, or Dare?”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos appreciated, and comments appreciated even more. find me @ commaperson on twitter.


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